NiseyKnits

I hope you all had a restful long weekend. I was so excited last week about my patterns coming out in the Knitscene Accessories 2012 that I forgot to mention that some of the items I made for the craft fair are now available in my Etsy shop. Drum roll please! The first up is this Skinny Drop Stitch scarf that I knit in Malabrigo Silky Merino, Viena colorway. I love this pattern so much that I've knit 3 more since this one. I haven't had the chance to block and photograph the other 3, but when I do, I'll make sure to share them with you. It's now up in my Etsy shop here .  The Viena colorway I used in this scarf is one of my absolute favorites, as the brown, yellow and orange colors just make a very bold statement. As usual, thanks to Zeina Newman, my fabulous model, for her outstanding work. These next two scarves are knit from my Colliding Stars pattern. I love this simple pattern, and the Classic Elite Waterlily yarn is a dream to work with. As the patter...

I am so excited for this week's post! I submitted two patterns to Knitscene Accessories magazine last year, and luckily for me both of them were accepted. The knitting deadline was mid-December so I spent most of late November and the first two weeks of December knitting frantically. In fact, I think I pulled an all-nighter in order to finish the Sunehri shawl, block it, and mail it so it would get to the editors in time. It was a tough night. If you don't believe me, ask my neighbor Claudine. :) I had to borrow a fan from her to speed the drying process during blocking. Anyway, enough of my chatter. Here are the two patterns! I'm so excited!! I designed the Sunehri Shawl on the fly. I thought it would be cool to use the elongated stitch pattern in a shawl. However I had never designed a shawl before. I looked online for instructions on how to design a shawl. (Trust me, a Google search works wonders!) I found this post by Michelle Miller of Fickleknitter. Michelle is ...

This week, after looking through all the inventory, supplies and materials I accumulated for the craft fair, I've realized that I want a well-organized home/craft studio. I want to set it up nicely so it looks like there's some order to the madness and creativity that happens here. I was trolling the web for ideas and came across some gorgeous home studios. This first one, Debee's studio, is my absolute favorite! I don't know her personally, but I have to tell you that her studio blew my mind. You can go to her blog post about her studio to get all the info as I unfortunately can't post her photos here. I was looking for better yarn organization ideas and came across this picture from knitsnknots.tumblr.com when I Googled "yarn storage". I tell you, I would be in my studio all day everyday if my stash looked like this. :) Then there's this lady, Yarnhog, who showed her recently organized/decorated craft room and it looks just beautiful. Ther...

PS: This is going to be another long post so get yourself settled before you start. You might want to bookmark this post for helpful tips on getting prepped for a craft fair.   Going through my preparation for the craft fair, I went between excitement and nervousness many many times. I wasn't sure how to proceed at all. How many items did I need? What did I need for decorating my stall? How would I accept payment? All these and many other questions rattled around in my head for a long time, and I scoured the internet to find some answers.  I compiled all the websites and blogs that gave me helpful information for this fair in a Google doc, and thought I'd share some of that info with you. I hope this is useful if and when you ever decide to do a craft fair. Please note that since I was selling hand-knit scarves and mitts, most of my ideas for displays will be specific to those items.  For an extensive supply list, this page from Bazaar Bizarre was invalua...

Finally, the post you've all been waiting for. :)  Just to give some background for those who might not have been on this blog before, I took part in my very first craft fair as a vendor two Saturdays ago (4/21/2012), at the Milpitas Christian School. I was excited to be asked (the organizer also sells on Etsy and found me there), and thought it would be a good way to venture into selling at fairs without a lot of risk since there was no booth fee per se. We just had to donate 10% of our sales from the fair to the school.  Although this arrangement sounded fair to me, I hesitated quite a bit before sending in my vendor application form. My main worry was that I wouldn't have time to create enough items for the fair. On the other hand, I felt that if I didn't take the plunge I would never do it. After two weeks of dilly dallying and going back and forth, I sent in my application and threw myself feverishly into getting ready for the fair. I spent hours on Ravelry an...